Lemon and Almond Biscuits

My quest to use up the fresh lemons in my fridge is still on-going. Last night, dinner was roast lamb shank, seasoned with lemon juice, olive oil, lots of garlic...c'est bon! Dessert came in the form of lemon biscuits with vanilla ice-cream.

Now, this lemon biscuits, recipe from Christelle le ru, is supposed to be quick and easy. Fast to make such that you basically just have to mix all the ingredients together, like the cupcakes.

Alas, it took me much longer, first because my other half forbid me from buying icing sugar. So I have to pound my own icing sugar from normal white sugar. Then, I have to further ground my own almonds from my current flaky almond stock. This took even longer, as all these grounding and pounding are done with a stone pestle and mortar. Now, my wish list for Christmas would be a proper blender! And being allowed to buy proper ingredients.

Second disaster came in the form of not watching over the oven even if I'm in the midst of a tasty dinner. So when the timer screamed, I was absolutely horrified to see almost burnt cookies. Saving grace is that I still have one-third of the cookie mixture left for a successful second batch.

If not for the above two follies, this biscuit recipe is easy to follow and almost fail proof. And me and Remi couldn't stop licking the tasty uncooked paste from the mixing bowl.

Lemon and Almond Biscuits
Makes about 18

100g unsalted butter
100g icing sugar
1 egg, beaten
rind of 1 lemon
juice of half lemon
70g ground almonds
125g flour
raisins or half almond (optional, for topping)

Preheat oven to 180C. Grease a biscuit tray.

Melt the butter in a pan. Mix in icing sugar, egg, lemon rind and lemon juice. I use a hand beater, but using a wooden spoon may be fine too.

Add the ground almonds and flour and mix well.

Place spoonfuls of the mixture onto the prepared tray, leaving some room between each biscuit. You may like to top the biscuit with say raisin, almond. I topped with half cranberry for the burnt batch, but forgot to do it for the second batch.

Bake for 10-20 minutes or until golden brown. Leave to cool.